


i’m just trying to fix myself (what the hell did i do?)

by classichysteria



Category: All Time Low (Band)
Genre: 2020, Alcohol, Angst, Arguing, Canon Compliant, Fighting, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classichysteria/pseuds/classichysteria
Summary: jack wants to stop drinking.very loosely based on life of the party.
Kudos: 8





	i’m just trying to fix myself (what the hell did i do?)

**Author's Note:**

> this is all fiction! none of this is  
> factual in the slightest, this is not a theory or a claim. simply fiction written with recognised characters. this is not meant to offend. i wrote this for myself because fanfiction is how i cope with stress and atl are my favourite band. :) (this is literally me venting about my hatred for the music industry, enjoy. although i will say it’s inaccurate as shit)

_i’m just trying to fix myself_

Quarantine was making him suffer, well more than he was already suffering. He was left to his own regard, left processing his own actions and thoughts in a way he had never done before. He had never criticised himself much before, he left that to hoards of people online and kept himself in line with those comments. He was undoubtedly a people pleaser. 

He was scared of the reaction of those around him, those close to him, when he would eventually come clean. He didn’t want it to be a big deal. He was still Jack. This one little thing shouldn’t be a substitute for a personality so it shouldn’t matter at all. If it does matter then they should be happy for him, with the way he’s going even he knew he’d find it difficult to make it past forty.

To put it bluntly,

Jack wanted to stop drinking.

Jack wanted to open about his mental health and recent struggles.

Jack wanted to do what Alex does and get what Alex gets.

Jack wanted to be loved for who he is, not the fabricated selling point he is “supposed to be”.

Jack just wanted to live a free life for fucksake. He doesn’t need to be an alcoholic to be loved, he doesn’t need to act stupid and immature to sell records. He needs talent to sell records and he goddamn has that even if no one acknowledges it.

April third was fast approaching and the label had arranged a zoom meeting to sort out promo for the record, he’d already been told they’d all have to tighten up considering the uncertainty of releasing a record midway through a global pandemic. You see, everyone in the music industry either has or feels like they have a branding needed to sell their music and Jack? His branding was by far the toughest out of the guys (not meaning they all had it easy), he was expected to drink near constantly, especially when in extreme public view (concerts, livestreams, interviews etc.), he was expected to act up and not take anything seriously and this expectation wasn’t forced on him only by some powerful record promoting team, no this was forced on him by his own fans.

The promoters did take it and run with it though, making sure Jack knew he was “the party guy” and to let Alex, Rian and Zack, “the mature ones”, deal with the messages behind the record and such.  
This hurt Jack, he wanted to scream and shout about how proud he was of the lyrics he’d written by himself, how proud he was of his guitar work and how much this record had given him the confidence boost he’d so desperately needed.

His laptop lit up.

Fuck.

He opened it to see the smiling faces of his band mates and Alex enthusiastically waving while Zack rolled his eyes sarcastically as if to say “you’ve seen him every day since middle school, how can you seriously still be that excited”. It was clear the lads had already been joined by the staff that worked for Fuelled By Ramen. 

They discussed how they’d release the next singles and how they’d make up for the missing shows and how they’d apologise for those postponed (the label said they didn’t need to bother with mentioning the cancelled UK festival shows as the US brought in far more money anyway, the band disagreed with that). This was mainly all good and Jack simply nodded along, concentrating on how much he’d missed the taste of lemonade. 

“And Jack,” one of the men in suits started, Jack looking up from his glass.  
“Yeah.” He smiled.  
“You’ll be needing to promote the wine some more- even if it’s not your wine don’t forget to post pictures with wine glasses etcetera. The wine sales will bring in the money from the things we’ll miss out on with the pandemic.”  
“But-“  
“We know you’ll cooperate just fine. Remind them to stay indoors so you’ll get to parties and such sooner- they’ll be more likely to cooperate with instructions from someone they look up to.”  
“Yes, but for fucksake! I dont want to promote partying and shit and hell I don’t want to be so fucking selfish! I’m taking this seriously! I don’t give a fuck! And for your information I’m going clean from drinking.” Jack was angry, Rian had been told to promote cold brew. Rian had told to do story interaction. Zack was told to promote fitness. Alex was told to support mental health and what was he supposed to be doing? Fucking drinking. Unhealthy habit he wasn’t going to be promoting to an audience he knew was predominantly underage or young, hell he didn’t want to promote his own mistakes to any audience.  
“Jack don’t make this hard, you love drinking, it’s fine!” Alex said.  
“It’s not fucking fine.” Jack said through the grit of his teeth. “What good has my lifestyle brought anyone? Partying is fun right enough but for fucksake I’m going to kill myself.”  
“Thought you already tried.” Alex snarled, Jack wasn’t sure why he was so angry at him. “And failed.” He smirked.  
Jack just left the call.  
He couldn’t take it.

It was about five minutes of silence before his phone began ringing and he near enough shat himself.

**alex g :)**

“Fucksake.” He sighed, dragging the e and lazily answering the phone call.  
“Look mate I’m sorry for the outburst, you know I love you. I was just stressed and frustrated, surly you understand.” Alex gave a laugh in attempt to lessen the tense atmosphere.  
“No, Alex, I don’t understand. You argued with me on the side of a random man who doesn’t give two shits about anything but money, you used my..” he choked on his words, “s-suicide attempt,” he paused. “Against me. You acted completely unnecessarily and I’d rather you’d support me in my choice to live a healthier life than choose money and some weird image over that.”  
“No, you acted unnecessarily and I’d like to enlighten you on the row we got when you left without permission!”  
Jack rolled his eyes and took a deep breath to keep his cool, “for once Alex. Hear someone else out. Please dude. Would you rather me have a panic attack on video because of your words in a stupid argument? Would you rather me be forced to do something harmful for money rather than stand up for myself and not do that? I had to leave for my own fucking safety, I’m emailing them everything anyway, I know what I’m doing.”  
“Do you know what you’re doing? Or do you have the intelligence and maturity of a 12 year old, grow up.” Alex fucking hung up.  
Jack didn’t know wether to scream or just cry.

He loved Alex, he did, but the man was horrendous in situations like this. He didn’t blame their fanbase for getting frustrated with him occasionally.

Jack’s phone went off again, “Alex I swear to-“ he stopped when he saw Zack’s name. He answered, hoping he’d say something slightly nicer. “Hey man.”  
“Yo, just wanted to see how you were. The label were pretty pissed but yknow I think they’ll learn from it.” He could hear Zack’s consoling smile from across the country.  
“Thanks. For caring.” Jack smiled.  
“You know, you deserve it. Alex called yet? Rian called me, said Alex called him in a state.”  
“Yeah, actually. He was a dick. Don’t really know what else to say.”  
“Sorry dude, I’m sure he’ll come round and if he doesn’t once Ricky finds out he definitely will.” Zack laughed.  
“Hopefully. I’m gonna go now, love ya.” Jack hung up, sighing, throwing his head back and facepalming.

He’d been sober for days now. Longer than he’d had the willpower for in years but he found himself stuck in autopilot, taking a bottle of vodka from the wine treehouse- he hadn’t climbed these steps in weeks.  
He cracked it open the minute he hit the floor and it was gone in under a minute. The lack of sobriety washing away has troubles and regrets, the familiar feeling of feigned and false stability, the concept of being okay that had long faded from Jack’s life. A problem he had only discussed fleetingly last summer before being drowned out like always. 

Who was he kidding? He couldn’t be mentally ill, he couldn’t be vulnerable. That was Alex’s place. Alex was the one that people asked how he was doing, Alex was the one who took the responsibility of discussing difficult topics. He took the weight off Jack’s shoulders. It was okay. It was all okay. Totally. He could breathe. He wasn’t panicking. 

Did he mention he was lying?

He was laying on his kitchen floor, empty bottle by his side. Cool floor chilling his spine as he cried, hot messy tears. His breaths were hitching and wet. He felt trapped and he just wanted someone by his side but there was a fucking pandemic and that was stressing him out of his tiny fucking head and he was so lonely and god he was just tired of it all.

He woke the next morning to a hangover, a painful back and a few texts.

**alex g :) 04:32  
Are you okay? x**

**alex g :) 04:33  
I really hope you’re sleeping you deserve it **

**alex g :) 04:35  
I love you Jay x**

**alex g :) 04:36  
I’ll call you later.**

**ri drummer boy 08:53  
you okay? alex and zack called, they’re worried too man :(**

**label 07:00  
Trouble Is release livestream 9:30am Mar 27 2020 **

He could ignore Alex, he wasn’t in the best place to deal with him, he could answer Rian and he could sulk over the label and he’d be good.

Turns out he didn’t reply to any of them, he trudged to bed and took a nap.

He awoke at 9:59am to seven missed calls from Alex, four from Rian, three from Zack and two from the label.

How would he describe this situation?  
That’s right, constant screaming and a whack in the face with a seven inch platform doc martin.

He picked up his phone and went live on the band account, slightly more rested than he was when he woke on the kitchen floor an hour ago, his head still pounding however.

The stream started off fine, Jack getting carried away in his own little world, laughing and smiling and being stupid. He felt better, maybe that was the vodka for breakfast. He felt dread and sadness in his relapse but he was riding the high of showering drunk on a livestream and getting love for it. 

Eventually the other boys and the management discovered the trash can fire of a livestream and began attempting to get him to do something useful, hell something that resembled something other than a mental breakdown disguised as “Jack just being Jack”.

He pulled a confused face and tried to let Alex into the stream.

His phone, the bastard, wouldn’t let him.

He tried Zack.

They begged him to just do the song, Alex was panicking. Jack just laughed and drank some more. Alex joined.

“You okay man?” Alex panicked even more.

“Yeah yeah I’m fine!” 

When did you turn into such a liar, Jacky?

“You?”

Alex still startled and afraid as ever, “yeah yeah, good, yeah.”

“Dude you cant see this but management is going mad! Shit did I just boot Alex?”

He tried Rian. He joined first try.

“Can we do shots?”

“Do we have to?” Rian asked.

“Come on.” 

Rian just went along with it, thoroughly confused and slightly concerned. Scratch that- majorly concerned.

Rian did one.

Jack did one.

Jack begged Rian to do another.

Rian refused.

The stream ended.

And it all came crashing down.

He fell to the floor, knees pulled to his chest, he cried. And he cried. He recited “fuck” to himself as if he was a song and someone just kept fucking restarting him.  
“W-what the fuck have I done? What the fuck. What the fucking- shit!” He was practically laughing by now, he was gone. Nothing made sense, why was he like this?

His phone vibrated, as he sat there, only his heavy breathing and occasional sobs filling the apartment.

**alex g :) @ boyband time low 13:59  
Are you okay? **

**drummer boy ri @ boyband time low 14:00  
jack, you alright?**

**zeeeee @ boyband time low 14:00  
Jack are you ok man? **

He fumbled over the keys on the screen.

**no not really :/**

He turned the small screen black and threw his phone across the room, the loud thump on the laminate flooring ringing loud in his ears.

“Where did I go wrong?” He paced his empty apartment, the only thing around him was the weight of his own depression and the traces of a brimming alcoholic.  
“What happened? Why the fuck am I like this?”

**what the hell did i do?**

Jack didn’t give a shit anymore, he grabbed a black bin bag and went at it, shoving any alcohol related thing that he’d previously strewn across the floor into it. His high adrenaline worked in his favour as he sprinted down flights of stairs with the bag.

He forcibly shoved the door to the trash room open and dumped the bag on the ground, grabbing his phone out of his jean pocket he flipped the bag off and took a photo before condemning it to a dustbin forever.

He took a deep breath and smiled. Maybe things would change. Just maybe. When he was no longer panting like an Olympic sprinter he posted the photo to Instagram

**jackbarakat: can’t be 100 if you’re only giving 95**

He put his phone away and trudged back up to his flat. It was tidy now and there was less of a temptation to drink considering he’d just had a full melt down on and off camera.

He felt a bit shit though, no one cared. He was clearly struggling (in his and the band’s opinion) yet no one seemed to care- it was just Jack being Jack right? Is this what people wanted? Is this what the label thought would get them money?

It was fucked in his more sober opinion. He was tearing his hair out, choking on old vodka and his own tears, bruising his fists on his floor and walls and people were getting a kick out of it? And people were getting a kick out of it.

**label 16:45  
Jack, we have deleted your Instagram post for interfering with the agreed promotional cycle of Wake Up, Sunshine. Your actions of the past week have been more than out of oder. This is your last chance before we terminate your social media. **

“Fucking fuck off you almighty cunts!” He screamed.

He paced back and forth, talking to no one but himself. Maybe someone would hear. Maybe his neighbour is listening through the wall.  
“Why do I have to drink to be considered funny? Why do I have to be off my tits on white claw and vodka to be considered myself? Why does no one take me seriously? Why am I just a junkie who pretends to play guitar? There’s no point in me being in the band, literally no point. No one would fucking miss me because they wouldn’t notice the missing presence of a possible alcoholic, I’m useless. I wish I was Rian, I wish I was Alex, I wish I was Zack. I wish I could be healthy and functional and open without question. Why am I like this?” He pleaded, breaths hard and hand running through his hair. He was scared, he was anxious and he was beyond fucking depressed. He felt trapped, he was a brand now, he can’t change it, who the fuck is he kidding!

_i’m the life of the party_

The months moved slow and he still couldn’t bring himself to stop drinking with both societal pressure, his own stupid head and the goddamn fucking label and their demands.

Could they not fuck up their merch for one fucking second? He knew the answer, no.

Wake Up, Sunshine had been a success and Monsters had been beyond that but god the label was still getting under Jack’s skin. 

It was all Alex wrote this, Alex wrote that. Alex said this heartfelt and touching thing in such an amazing way in this lyric. He loved Alex, more than life, but he had poured his heart and soul into so many of those lyrics. He had been so self conscious, convinced he was the comedy relief. But he believed in himself for a minute and made some of the best songs he was sure they’d ever released. He felt selfish but he really just wanted to be seen as more than “the party guy” for a fucking second.

It was near approaching November and it still felt like goddamn April, he was sick of it. He was still drinking, still unfit and still fucking sad.

He went to the gym. He didn’t drink anything. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut so posted about it. He was over the fucking moon.

But Jack had long ago learned, happiness doesn’t last.

It was an interview, Alex was here now that was good- more than good. Fucking great. He still remembers that interviewer’s words. Clear as day.

“So you were exercising Jack, what’s up with that?”

Attention was on him.

“You’re not drinking either? Wow.”

God he felt awkward.

He felt guilty, why was he changing himself? He can’t do that. That’s not allowed.

He got himself a drink and watched everyone stop worrying, they were happy with him. That made him feel okay. Until the end of the stream.

Jack switched the laptop off and took a deep breath.

“You okay there Jay?” Alex asked.

Jack shook his head and put his head in his hands “hard to explain.”

Alex put his hand on Jack’s back, “come on, it’s alright.”

“It’s so stupid, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Hell it shouldn’t be expected of me- or anyone. This really shouldn’t be difficult to say but,“ he took a breath and felt walls collapsing around him, “Lex, I’m gonna stop drinking.”

The room filled with an uncomfortable silence.

Alex was the one to break it, standing up, walking away “alright.” He said.

Jack didn’t see what he was doing in the kitchen, obviously he can’t look through walls but he had a rough idea. 

In the end his rough idea was right, Alex was holding two cans of White Claw, “come on, Jay. What’s up?”

“What’s up?!” Jack’s eyes widened. “I’m pretty fucking sure you know.”

“I don’t though, do I? You’re saying you wanna stop drinking, that’s not something Jack Barakat would say, something’s up mate!”

“Alex. You fucking know. And why did I say I wanted to stop drinking? Because for fucksake, Alex, I fucking do!” He pleaded, Alex raising an eyebrow. “It’s breaking me and you’ve seen it, it’s not good.”

“Yeah.” Alex said, turning back around to the kitchen. He returned with one can. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Jack gave a small smile, still unsure how to feel about Alex and his various odd reactions but he guessed, that’s just Alex.

_somewhere in between who i used to be and who i’ll be tomorrow_

Alex sat on the couch again, against Jack’s side, “will you still come out when we’re on tour and shit? Not that we’ll be on tour for at least another year.” He asked.  
“Of course, dumbass, I’m only not drinking. I can still have fun. Awsten goes out with Parx, Patty came out with us on our tour with AII. It’s normal not to drink.”  
Alex hummed in acknowledgement, drinking from his can, “guess so, just can’t imagine you without alcohol in your hand.”  
“That’s the problem, Alex, shouldn’t be this way. Why is my branding unhealthy drinking habits? Why do the label love it and why do the fans love it too?”  
“Now I think about it is a bit weird but still. It’s just a part of All Time Low, innit. It’s not something I wanna change really. I like being the party band.” Alex said.  
“Same! But for fucksake I don’t need developing alcoholism for a party!” Jack laughed.  
“You could just cut down, I don’t drink as much as you but I still drink, it’s good.”  
“Alex, listen. I’m quitting. End of. It hasn’t been fun in a long time, it’s just pain and shitty memories.”  
“Fine. I’ll just miss doing shots with you and being drunk on tour.”

“Alex. I really don’t need alcohol to be an idiot.”


End file.
